


November: Drabble Every Day - 2015 Drabbles

by crossingwinter



Series: Irresponsible Storytelling [14]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Minor Pairing: Alys x Sigorn, Minor Pairing: Arya x Aegon, Minor Pairing: Arya x Gendry, Minor Pairing: Brandon x Ashara, Minor Pairing: Cersei x Jaqen, Minor Pairing: Elaena x Michael, Minor Pairing: Ned x Catelyn, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-04-29 09:31:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 16,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5122979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I plan to write a drabble every day in the month of November.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Satisfied (Brandon x Ashara)

“You strike me as a woman who’s never been satisfied.”

Ashara feels Ser Barristan stiffen besides her as she turns to face the man in question.  He’s tall, and has a long face and dark hair and his eyes…they’re hungry.  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she says, feeling a smile rise to her lips at the same time that Ser Barristan barks,  “You forget yourself.”  

Ashara forgets herself as well, letting her eyes drip from his face to his shoulders and hips.  He’s handsome.   _He knows it too._

That brings a smile to his face.  “You’re like me.  I’m never satisfied.”

“Is that right?”  

Barristan cuts in.  “Ser, you–”

“I’m no knight, Ser Barristan.  I’m Brandon Stark.”

Ashara raises her eyebrows, belatedly taking in his northern garb, the fine velvet and fur lining of his surcoat.  “Well, Stark,” Ser Barristan is saying, bristling all the more, “I repeat: you forget yourself.”

“I was merely speaking of dance, for it seems the Lady Ashara will never stop.  Would you consider gracing me, my lady?”  He extends his arm, and Ashara takes it.  

“Will you be satisfied then?”

“Perhaps,” he smirks, and she notices a bite in his eyes when he looks at Ser Barristan.  Together, they walk to the dance floor, and as the music strikes up again, they begin to move together–not touching, never touching.  To her surprise, he is silent as they dance.

“What,” she remarks as they pass one another’s shoulders and twirl to face one another again, “I was at least expecting conversation.  Are you not even attempting to satisfy me?”

“You’ll have to forgive me, my lady,” he responds, “I was distracted by your dancing.”

“Were you now?”  They pass again, raising hands to circle around before splitting apart again.  “Does it satisfy you?”

He laughs.  “You like that word.”

“You brought it up,” she responds evenly.  “And I will confess, it’s a useful one.  So many people are never satisfied, won’t you agree?”

“I’ve heard it said that satisfaction is complacency.”  They’re close together now, and Ashara feels his breath on the skin of her cheek before the dance takes them away from one another again.

“So you never wish to be satisfied, then?” she asks, and once again, her gaze drops down his body.  He’s young, and strong.  She wonders idly how old he is.  Younger than she is, of that she’s sure, but closer in age to Elia or closer to Andrey’s young bride?

“If only for a moment,” he says, and her eyes snap to his again, and she raises her eyebrows.  Surely he’s betrothed.  Surely.  He’s Lord Rickard’s heir.  She wracks her brains, but cannot think.  The Starks have never been at court, though she knew that Lord Rickard’s second son was at the Eyrie and a friend to Rhaegar’s cousin.   _A northern lady, probably_ , she thought.  She should know.  She’d find out later.

“Only a moment?” she recovers, noticing the way his eyes are on her neckline.  “That’s…disappointing.  I should hope some satisfaction would last longer than that.”  He flushes and she bites back a smile.  “Did you come to ask me for a dance for only a moment’s satisfaction?”  

It’s only then that he looks uncomfortable.

“In truth, my lady, I came to ask that you might dance with my younger brother.  Ned.  He’s a helpless thing, and shyer than any boy should be, but sweet and good.  He’s been staring at you all night.”

Ashara feels her stomach drop.   _And just like that, the satisfaction’s gone_.  She glances over at the benches where the northerners are sitting.  She sees the two younger Starks bickering, the youngest with winestains on his doublet, and then her eyes find Ned.  He’s shorter than Brandon is, and less handsome, but he blushes practically purple when he sees her looking at him.   _Poor boy,_ she thinks,  _He’ll need to get past that one day._

She turns back to Brandon as the music ceases and the dance ends.  He is watching her closely, and there is no teasing in his eyes.   _Is he disappointed too?_

“Well,” she says calmly, “I have not yet been satisfied with my dancing, so I do not see why I should not dance with Ned.”  He’d be a more interesting partner than Jon Connington had been, at least.  

Brandon offers her his arm, and she takes it once again, and he leads her over to the table.

“My lady,” he says, annunciating each word perfectly.  “Allow me to introduce my brother, Eddard Stark.  Ned–the lady Ashara Dayne.  I hope you’ll have the good graces to dance with her.”

She pities the boy again, and looks at Brandon.  There’s something cool and overbright in his eyes.   _Is he disappointed?_ she wonders again,  _Having to give me away to his brother?  One moment of satisfaction, and then left wanting again?_

“My lady,” Ned Stark says.  Where Brandon’s voice is strong and brassy, Ned’s is quiet, and he offers her his arm.  She takes it and smiles at him, hoping to ease his nerves.  He chances a smile back at her, then looks at Brandon.

“Well, get on with it,” Brandon teases, swatting Ned on the shoulder.  Then his eyes are back on Ashara and she feels her stomach twist. “The song’s begun.”

 _He was right_ , she thinks as his younger brother led her back to the dance floor, her mind still full of Brandon’s arms, his lips, his smile.   _I’m not yet satisfied._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so obviously _Hamilton_ trash in this that I feel I must recommend it. Go listen. It's on Spotify.


	2. Then he's in the air (Aegon the Conqueror)

“Aegon!”

He doesn’t listen.  

“Aegon, come  _back here_.  You’ll get yourself  _killed_.”  He hears Visenya make a huff.  “ _Why_  must I  _always_  be the one who saves your neck from your own damn stupidity?   _Aegon!_ ”

He doesn’t even shrug at her, though he is tempted to.  Instead he continues climbing down the seacliff to where Balerion is resting on the beach.  The dragon is curled like a cat, tail circling his body, wings hunched next to his ribbed spine, his eyelids drooping lazily to the sound of the tide going back out into the bay.  Father had forbidden him from going near the dragons until he was old enough, but father had never said when “old enough” would be.  And Aegon was near a man grown.

Visenya had once told him that to ride a dragon was to realize that she could do anything she wanted, and that when she bonded to Vhagar it was proof of her own greatness.  But Vhagar is young, and angry, and Balerion…

Balerion is true greatness.  Huge and black and red with teeth taller than Aegon.  Of every creature on Dragonstone, it was Balerion who had known Valyria of old, who had been born there a hundred years before.   _Does he miss it?_ Aegon finds himself wondering.  Perhaps that is why the dragon enjoys the sea.  Vhagar and Meraxes stay in the rocky caves, but Balerion crouches by the water, letting the breeze wash over his face.

When his feet reaches the sand, he hears one last hiss of “ _Aegon!”_ from Visenya before she goes silent.  He knows she won’t say anymore, not with him so close, not if she might wake the dragon.  He walks towards Balerion, his heart pounding in his throat.  He’s seen Balerion burn and eat a cow whole, and he may be strong for his age, but a cow is still bigger.  

The dragon opens one eye and observes him, his slitted pupils retracting slightly against the brightness of the day.  Then he turns his head and sniffs at him, opening the other green eye as well.   _Does it smell fear, like a dog?_ His father had always said so, but it had always seemed so hyperbolic when his father had said it.  

He continues to walk forward, and Balerion continues to watch him, and Aegon–Aegon refuses to look away– _can’t_  look away.  

It is in that moment that it fully hits him how huge the dragon is–how great.   _Too late to go back now_ , he thinks.  He thinks of Visenya, and how she’ll mock him forever if he flees, thinks of his father who would forever say how disappointing it would be that his son and heir could not claim the Black Dread, thinks of himself.   _I am born for greatness_ , he thinks, though the words feel odd in his mind.  

 _I am already great_.  That is a voice not his own.  It is lower, more like a growl, like the crackling of burning wood.  Is he imagining it?  He must be imagining it.

“Balerion,” he says clearly, though quietly enough that Visenya, still up on the cliff, won’t be able to hear him.   The dragon flares its nostrils. “We will be great together, you and I.”   _We already are._

He takes another step forward, and another, and rests his hand on the dragon’s snout, still not breaking away his eyes.  He strokes it as he would stroke a cat, wondering if Balerion can feel his touch through his armored scales.   _Probably not_ , he thinks.   _The touch is more for me._ He walks along Balerion’s side, trailing his hand on the scales so that, if the dragon can still feel him, he’ll know where he is.  He does not look back to see if Balerion is watching.  If his death is coming, he will hear Visenya cry out.  

He reaches the end of Balerion’s neck and turns to face the dragon, letting his eyes flick to its head again.  Balerion’s head is raised, and almost fully rotated, staring at him.  Angrily?  Aegon cannot tell.  He thinks not, though.  He rests both hands on the dragon and begins to climb in his neck.

As he does, he hears a grumble in Balerion’s throat, and his hand almost slips on the scales.  He stares at Balerion, and Balerion stares back, but his neck begins to curve, and he brings his head closer to Aegon, sniffing him again.   _Are you angry?_ Aegon wants to ask, but instead he is silent.  He is silent, because he cannot breathe for now is the moment, surely, when his stupidity comes to kill him.

Balerion sniffs, and blinks, and does nothing.  All Aegon can hear is the pounding of his heart, the sound of the tide somewhere in the distance, and the way that the dragon’s scales scrape together as he breathes.  Breathes, and does nothing.

Aegon continues to climb.

He settles himself on the dragon’s back, holding one of the great spikes, and he locks eyes with Balerion again.   _He hasn’t grilled me yet.  He may yet not.  He won’t._

_He won’t._

Aegon knows it, as clearly as he knows his own name.  And he smiles.

“Fly,” he commands, and the dragon shifts beneath him.  He clutches the spike as tightly as he can as muscles and scales shift beneath him and then–

Then he’s in the air.


	3. Lady Seaworth (Marya)

A letter comes one morning when it is raining, written in a neat maester’s hand, and it is Stannis who reads it to her.

“Dear Marya,” he reads, his small voice filling the hall more loudly than the crackling logs in the fireplace.  “I hope that you are well, and that Stannis and Steffon are being good.  I miss you all very much.”  Stannis looks up at her and smiles, his brown eyes crinkling.  She nods at him, smiling, encouraging.  He still trips over the words, but it is better that he try to read than that she.  She’s taught herself some–it makes running Davos’ castle easier–but she’s no great reader, and at eleven Stannis is already better at it than her. 

She pulls Steffon onto her lap as Stannis goes on.  “I am safe and sound, though not for fear that that would be the case.  I was held for a time at the king’s command.”  Marya frowns.  Why would the king have held Davos?  Unless that red witch had something to do with it.  

Stannis looks at her, and she nods at him to continue.  “But you need not worry of that.  That is in the past.  I am in the king’s good graces, and serve him as ever I have.  His Grace has named me his hand, and named me lord of the Rainwood, which makes you my Lady Marya, and our sons shall be lords until their dying days.”  Stannis says the last words very fast and he looks at Marya excitedly.

“Mother!  A lord!” he practically sings and Steffon hops off her lap so the two can jump about together.   “I will be lord of the Rainwood!” Stannis sings.

“ _I_ want to be lord of the Rainwood!” Steffon pouts.

“Neither of you shall be.  Devan is your father’s heir.”  Marya closes her eyes for a moment and sees Dale’s face–Dale as he was when he was no older than Steffon, when memories of Flea Bottom still filled his head.   _Dale, Allard, Matthos, and Maric.  My boys.  My lordly boys.  My boys who should have been lords, would have been._

 _You said we’d be safe_.  Are they safe now?  With Stannis weak and at Dragonstone and her husband his hand–what would stop the Lannister queen from coming down to the Rainwood and hanging her and her boys as a traitor’s bride?  Her throat tightens as she looks at her boys–her last two, her youngest, only children.  Surely they would be safe.  The Lannister queen had children of that age as well.  She is a mother, surely she knew a mother’s mercy.

“But Devan’s not even here,” complains Steffon.

Marya forces her voice to remain calm as she speaks.  “Aye, that is because he serves the King, like your father.  Keep reading, Stannis.”

Stannis straightens and flourishes the letter.  “Devan is well,” he says, nodding to Marya.  “He learns with the Princess, and is her greatest friend.”

“Will Devan marry the Princess, mama?” Steffon asks.

“Hush, child.  Even though your father is the King’s Hand, that is too low a match for her.  She’ll wed the Arryn boy, like as not.”  She remembers Davos talking of Jon Arryn’s boy.  He was of an age, and of lofty birth, and as far as she knew, the Arryns had not yet declared for any king.   _Wise,_ she thinks, looking at her boys.   _Wise, to keep himself safe while the highlords war.  He’s younger than Steffon.  Younger than all my boys._

“Give my love to our boys,” Stannis reads.  “And my love, of course, to you, my dearest Lady Marya.”

“When will father be home?” Steffon asks.

“It doesn’t say,” Stannis replies, looking back at the letter.

“But I want to see father!” Steffon insists.

“He’ll be home when the war is won,” Marya says, running her hand through her youngest’s hair, doing her best to ignore the twist in her stomach.  

 _I’ll never see him again._ She hated the thought, hated it as profoundly as she’d hated anything in her life.  She wanted to hold him, to mourn their boys…But how could they win this war?  And if they lost, how would he survive?


	4. there’s blood on the walls. (Theon)

_no, kyra no._

there’s blood on the walls.

she’s wagging her tail and there’s blood on the walls.

she has a ratlike tail, and she wags it when she sees it, back and forth, whipping it against the thin white walls between the kitchen and the living room.  she’s excited to see him.  kyra likes him.  kyras like him.  

the skin on her tail is thin, and she can’t feel the way it strikes the wall.  she breaks the skin as she comes over to him.  there’s blood on the walls.

the house is empty right now.  just reek, and kyra and the other girls who are down in the basement.  the other girls don’t mind reek.  but kyra likes him.  she’s white, and her fur is so thin that he can see the pink of her skin through it.  pink and white and brown is kyra.  pink and white and brown and red at the tail that she strikes against the wall.

“sit,” reek tells her, and she does.  she’s well behaved.  the girls all are well behaved.  he trains well. 

reek goes into the kitchen to find paper towels.  he wets it between his remaining fingers, and manages to squish some of the water out of it.  claws click on the wood floor behind him.

“sit, kyra,” he commands again, and the clicking stops.  

“ _she’s better as a dog, reek.  more obedient.  though i will say she was spectacular in her last moments.  are those tears reek?”_

_“no sir.”  
_

_“i think they might be.  why would there be tears?  reeks don’t cry.  no more than dogs.”  
_

_“no sir.”  
_

he passes kyra, sitting in the entrance to the kitchen, and goes back out into the hallway.  he begins to rub at the blood on the wall, washing from red to pink to white.  he scrubs, and scrubs and scrubs.  they’re mostly gone, the whipping tailmarks trailing blood.  but not quite.   _it’s stained_.

he scrubs, and scrubs, and scrubs.  he moves the paper towel from his finger tips to the heel of his palm because his fingers hurt from scrubbing and he can push harder.  behind him, he hears kyra shift.  he hears the clicking of claws, feels her tongue against his face.

“sit, kyra.”

she keeps licking.

“sit.”

there are tears on his face he realizes.   _reeks don’t cry.  no more than dogs.  i must be imagining them._ kyra keeps licking his tears and he keeps cleaning her blood.


	5. sky yellow like a cat’s eye (Steffon)

the winds had been hard the night before. late-autumn winds that swirl and roil. out at sea, they are dangerous. in shipbreaker bay, they are deadly.

for just a moment, though, the sea is calm, the sky yellow like a cat’s eye and steffon stands on the deck of the ship, staring at the bay. they are close–so close, and if they can sail before the winds strike up again, if they can make land…

the captain barks orders to his men. there are no winds, the sails hang limply, and the sailors have gone below to the oars. 

steffon knows the storms. he is a baratheon of storm’s end, in a line unbroken for over two hundred years, and before that, the blood of the durrandon storm kings in him as well. he knows the winds and the rain. he knows that the storm is following them east and that they had done their best to land in its peaceful center, but that if they did not make land, the ship would shatter on the rocks and they would all be dead.

it is the danger of sailing in autumn, though there would have been no way to know that the seasons had changed while they were away. volantis was far to the south, and there was no citadel that sent news of the changing seasons on raven’s wing to each of the free cities. he pulls his cloak more tightly about him and looks west. he can see it in the distance–his castle, his home, rising round and proud from the heart of the bay. they are close, he knows. close enough without wind? he looks up at the sky. 

the cat’s pupil is retracting, growing smaller and smaller. or maybe he is just imagining it. he looks over at the captain. the captain keeps his hand on the wheel and stares straight ahead. he hears drums below to keep the oarsmen in time. he looks at cassana, a little ways down the deck, pointing to places on the shore and saying things to the boy patchface, who is nodding and smiling and saying things to make her laugh. 

he looks back at the castle. 

he wonders if his boys are on the parapets, looking out at sea, waving even though they know their father can’t see them yet. 

he hears a snap, and suddenly they are moving, the sails full. he hears the captain shout, calling men to the deck, and when steffon looks up again, the cat’s eye has moved west and there is only darkness.


	6. but he's your brother (sandor)

gregor is the first person he’d wanted to kill–the first person ever.  he’d seen dogs kill when his father had taken him hunting, he’d seen butchers kill, but wanting someone dead, and wanting to be the one who did it?

“but he’s your brother” the stark girl had said, looking dubious. how many times had heard that?   _he’s your brother, so you’d best learn to live with him.  he’s your blood, as part of you as anyone ever will be–especially with a face like yours.  forgive and forget, that’s the godly way._ he’d always wanted to laugh at that.  how could he bloody forget when he saw his face reflected back at him?

she looks like alinore.  not too much, but enough.  alinore had been bigger than arya stark is.  she was a clegane, of course she’d be bigger.  they were all bigger.  freakish big, and strong, with hooked noses, every last one of them.  and her face had been square where arya’s was long and thin, and she’d always done her best to make herself small and mouselike because gregor ignored her when she was small and mouselike.  and she’s the same age that alinore had been when she’d been found with her neck snapped.  ten.  young still, but…

it’s the eyes that do it.  

arya stark’s eyes are a heavy grey, and too old to be only ten.   _war ages you_ , he remembers lord marbrand saying to one of the men after the sack of king’s landing.   _gregor ages you,_ sandor had wanted to shout at him.  he’d been older at twelve than half the green-boys in red cloaks were at sixteen.  and alinore–she’d been only ten, but older than ten…

_but he’s your brother._

_aye, and that didn’t stop him killing my father and killing my sister.  he was her brother too._ no one had been able to prove either, but he’d known, he’d just known.  alinore wasn’t clumsy.  she wouldn’t just fall down the stairs like that.

he looks at arya stark again, with her grey eyes that are like alinore’s–the exact same damned shade.  there are even dark circles under the girl’s eyes which mimics the shadows that surrounded alinore’s deep-set eyes.

 _but he’s your brother._ does her voice sound like alinore’s?  he can’t remember what alinore’s voice sounded like.  it’s too bloody long since he’d last heard it, and he’d never hear it again.   _he killed you.  he bloody killed you, and you were the only thing that was truly good there besides the dogs.  he deserves to die for you.  for you._

and then there’s that bloody bird twittering in his ear,  _gentle mother, font of mercy, save our sons from war we pray…_

_save our sons from war…_

he’s weary to the bone and doesn’t want to think about the bleeding stark girls anymore and how they keep bloody saying things–

he wants gregor  _dead._ dead, in as painful a way possible.  he wants to see him bleed, wants to–

_save our sons from war we pray_

_but he’s your brother._

she’d sooner kill him than her sister–him for her little butcher’s boy.  didn’t she see that gregor was worse than ever he was–that gregor–

he’d screamed when he’d run.  he’d screamed for mercy, and hadn’t gotten it.

 _save our sons from me_.

how could the mother save him?  his mother hadn’t, and he was the sort of beast that she sent little birds to pray for safety against.  no matter how many fucking knights, or gregor’s rats, or how many butcher’s boys he killed, it wouldn’t bring alinore back.

_but he’s your brother._

_no.  no he’s not my brother.  he never was.  he’s not anything to me at all._


	7. Much much later (Arya x Aegon)

She first meets him at a recital.  She is nine.  He is fifteen.

Sansa is singing in the chorus and playing violin with a chamber group.  He is playing piano.  She doesn’t like going to Sansa’s recitals.  They just remind her that she can’t sing prettily and she ends up playing hangman on the program with Bran until mother catches sight of her and takes it away because she’s being rude.  She ends up watching him play the piano, the way arms arch like a statue.  She’s never seen anyone look like that before.

* * *

She sees him next when she goes to one of Jon’s basketball games.  Jon is on the bench for most of it–he’s young, and new to the team.  But he plays almost the whole time, his face red and sweaty, running his hand through silvery blond hair that’s probably a little too long because it keeps falling in his face.  

She didn’t know someone could like music and sports.  Sansa makes it sound like that’s breaking the rules–that artsy people  _can’t_  like sports.  It’s always _seemed_  to make sense.  Robb isn’t musical or artistic, Jon likes to draw but he likes to draw anime not classical art so it’s not the same, right? And Bran joins every sports team he can manage and Arya…well, she’s not a singer like Sansa and when she tried playing violin it sounded like a wailing cat, but she’d always been quick when she played soccer.  But there’s Aegon, running up the basketball court, his arms arching as much like a statue when he shoots hoops as when he plays piano.  

* * *

She doesn’t see him again until much later.  Much much later.  She’s finished with college, and she’s working at a community center, scheduling yoga classes and soup kitchens and election events.  Her mother says it takes up too much of her time and she makes too little money.  She shrugs that off.

He comes in around Christmas, when they have a little Christmas show for the community, children cutting out thousands of snow flakes and singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” a little bit out of key but with a lot of energy.  He’s playing piano again, fingers jumping across the keyboard, slowing when the kids get caught up on all the moving notes in the “Gloooooooriaaaaaaas” and catching them again when they get fast again during the “in excelsis deos”.  His hair is still shaggy and hangs in his eyes, and his shoulders are still broad and taper into a narrower waist and Arya can’t stop watching him because she’d not thought to see him again.  He probably doesn’t notice her the way she notices him.  He’d have no reason to recognize Jon’s kid sister grown up, and it’s not like she ever looked like Sansa.

But when the show is finished and he tugs on a black coat and a festive red scarf, he comes over to her.  “Sorry,” he says, “Awkward question.  Do you know Jon Snow?”

“Yeah, he’s my brother,” Arya says, smiling, and he relaxes visibly.  

“Thought that might be it.  You look a lot like him.  I used to play basketball with him.”

“I know,” Arya says.  He raises an eyebrow and she blushes.  “I saw you at his basketball games when I was younger.”

“You’ve got a good memory.”

“You haven’t changed very much.”

He grins.  “I guess not.  I was closer to me then than you are to you then.”  His eyes drop and Arya’s stomach lurches.  She’s in an ugly Christmas sweater with reindeer all over it, and it’s lumpy and too big for her.  

But he doesn’t seem to mind that.  He doesn’t seem to mind that at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you following on Tumblr, I'll post this there later. I try not to go on the website on Saturdays.


	8. Arthur Dayne is Tired of your Dick Jokes (Arthur)

He knows what they whisper of him.  When he was younger he welcomed it, had laughed at it, for it was funny, wasn’t it?  It was terribly funny.  

Now, he’s merely tired.

“But how  _great_  is your  _greatsword?”_

 _“_ The Sword of the Morning, eh?  What if you want to use it in the evening?”

“Which is bigger?  A longsword or a greatsword?”  

All with giggles and sniggers.  Once, he’d laughed.  He’d always appreciated good ribald humor.  But now…

At least his sworn brothers make no such comments.  Oswell had once when he’d been in his cups, but Arthur had been in his cups then as well and had not minded so much.  There is peace, at least, in White Sword Tower.

Or at least, peace in the day.  Arthur never thinks he’ll find peace in the morning anymore.

For when he wakes from his slumber, his manhood almost painfully hard, the first thing he can think of is that he is Arthur Dayne, the  _Sword_  of the Morning, and he cringes.  

Where once he’d have taken his cock in hand and given himself a few firm pumps until he spilled his dreams onto his palm, now he groans, and presses his face to his pillow and wishes that his ancestors had thought of a less…symbolic name for he who would carry Dawn.  Dawn was a fine name for a sword.  She was a fine sword.  But the Sword of the Morning?

Had the First of Men not known that Sword was a term for cock?  That men would compare the sizes of their swords as they would the size of their…swords?  Or had some ancient Lord of Dayne been in his cups, laughing merrily and thinking, “I shall curse my descendants with a ribald name,” as a patriarch might?  His father had certainly found great humor in japes about members.  Arthur had once as well.  Perhaps they had come by it naturally.

Arthur would press his face into his pillow, blocking out the light of dawn.  If he’s going to do this, he must not think of  _dawn_  or else he’ll never be able to take his sword in hand ever again.  Let him pretend it’s the black of night, and that he’s not the Sword of the Morning and that he doesn’t know the difference between a greatsword and a longsword.  Let him pretend until he spills and then can face the day.


	9. The game goes on, but the world ends (Rickon)

He’s pretty sure they stuck him in QB because he’s a Stark.  Robb had been QB, Bran is QB, so he probably has it in him.  That sort of thing runs in families, he hears coach say.  Rickon’s not so sure.  

Even if he’s QB, though, it’s not like he sees playing time.  He’s a freshman, and Bran’s still on the team, with an arm like a gun and the easy smile that calms the team on their first night of the season.  He’s been working with coach for years, and everyone knows that he’s going to go far.  Scouts are already looking at him the way they looked at Robb, and he’s still only a junior.  

“Keep an eye on how he plays,” Coach says to Rickon as Bran wins the coin toss and prepares his first play.  “No one’s expecting you to be perfect.  Not Yet.  But watching Bran will teach you a whole heck of a lot.”  He claps Rickon on the shoulder, and Rickon fiddles with the grille on the front of his helmet and listens to the roar of the crowd as Bran snaps the ball back to Cerwyn and the game begins.

It’s one touchdown in that the world ends.  The game goes on, but the world ends, and refs are running onto the field and people are stepping back, and Rickon’s heart is thudding in his chest because Bran’s on the ground and he’s not moving.  He’s not  _moving_.  Summer’s crouched over him, gently prodding his shoulder and talking quietly, his helmet somewhere on the ground, but Bran’s not moving, not responding to his best friend.  

Rickon sees a stretcher, hears whispers from the team and then coach turns to him.  “Well, get out there.”

“What?”

“He’s definitely out for the rest of the game.  The game goes on.  Get out there.”

“Coach–” Rickon looks at the stretcher.  The’ve strapped Bran to it and are rolling him off the field towards a waiting ambulance.   _I should go with him_ , Rickon thinks.   _Mom and dad are.  I bet Arya’s there too.  I can’t play–they need me._

“Stark,” Coach barks, and he hears Shaggy make a noise next to him.  The worst thing that Shaggy could possibly do is snap at Coach though, so Rickon rests a hand on his friend’s shoulder and squares his own.

He puts on his helmet, Coach gives him the play, and goes out onto the field, trying not to tremble.  

He’s not supposed to be in charge–not yet.  He’s only a freshman and all the first-string players are juniors and seniors, not even a sophomore among them.   _What would Bran do?_

He sees Bran on that stretcher and his stomach lurches.  He can’t think of Bran.  He can’t.  Not right now, even though Bran would smile and tell him he’d be great.  He looks at Summer.  Summer’s on edge too, but Summer, at least, he’s known since he was a kid–Bran’s friend the way that Shaggy is his.  Summer gets it.

 _Don’t think of any of them_ , Rickon tells himself as he gives the play.   _Not Dad or Robb, or Jon, or Bran.  Think of the team.  Focus on the ball._

He snaps the ball, and the game is in motion again.


	10. "You’re not the baby." (Brienne)

“Rickon will get tired and say he isn’t, but don’t believe him.  He just likes to stay up as late as the others.” Mrs. Stark was saying as she put her earrings back in.  “And Bran will probably want to be out in the dark, but it’s hard to navigate his chair once the sun goes down so if Rickon’s asleep and you can be with him, it’s fine, but if you can’t be with him, make sure he’s inside.”

“Arya will be with me,” Bran insists.

“Yes,” Arya agrees.  She’s sitting on the ground and has already kicked off her dress shoes and is putting on sneakers.  “I’ll be with Bran, mama.  I promise.”

Mrs. Stark gives her a look.  “I know, but if you go off again–”

“I won’t after dark.  I promise,” Arya says again, and she smiles up at Bran.

“I’ll keep an eye on him, don’t worry, Mrs. Stark,” Brienne says.

It’s her first time babysitting for the Starks.  Tonight is Mrs. Stark’s brother’s wedding reception, and Brienne is keeping an eye on the younger ones who might be bored by the long dinner and endless toasts.

 Mrs. Stark smiles at her, then glances at Arya and Bran.

“Now, you two, stay out of trouble.  And Arya–you do have a place at the–”

“I don’t  _want_  to sit with the Freys,” Arya grumbles loudly.  “I’d rather sit with the _babies.”_

“I’m not a baby,” Bran insists hotly.

“You know what I mean,” Arya says, rolling her eyes.

“I’m not a baby  _either_ ,” Rickon says, mimicking Bran’s intonation perfectly.  

“Of course not,” Bran mutters.  

“Be nice to your brother,” Mrs. Stark says sharply.  Then she presses a kiss to the top of Bran’s head.  “Be good.  Brienne can take care of everything you need.”

“Yes, mama,” Bran says.  Mrs. Stark kisses the top of Arya’s head, then fiddles with her hair clips which are already coming loose, before picking Rickon up and peppering his face with kisses until he giggles.

Then she hands him to Arya, who puts him on the ground and holds his hand.  

Mrs. Stark looks at Brienne again.  “I think that’s everything.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Brienne says.  

“And if they’re all in bed, you should feel free to go to sleep as well.  I don’t know how late the party will go, but it’s silly to wait up.  Sansa and Arya can put themselves to bed when they’re ready.”

“I’m going to the party,” Sansa calls from the other room, and Brienne looks at her through the open door.  She’s wearing a pretty pink dress and sparkling shoes and is sitting neatly on the couch while the two older boys tie and re-tie their ties.  

“Yes, Sansa,” Mrs. Stark calls back.  “But if she comes back, you don’t need to stay up with either of them unless you want to.  You may want to.”  She gives Rickon another look.  “He can be exhausting though when it’s your first time babysitting.  

“Right.  All right.  Ned!  Where are you?”

“Dad’s on the phone with Uncle Ben,” Robb says, sliding across the hardwood floor with his new dress shoes.

“Don’t slide like that, they’re new,” Mrs. Stark says.  She goes and knocks on the door to the other bedroom.  “Ned, we’re going to head downstairs now.”

Mr. Stark hangs up the phone, smiles at Brienne, waves to the other children, then joins his wife, older sons, and Sansa as they file out of the suite towards the elevator and the reception.

“Right,” Brienne says, turning to the youngest three Stark children.  “I know your Uncle Edmure has a game room set up for the kids.  Shall we go?”

“Yes!” Bran says happily, and Arya goes to push his chair.

“Can I bring Shaggy?” Rickon asks.  He’s holding the gigantic plushie, dragging it along the floor.

“Yes,” Brienne says.  “Do you want me to carry him so he doesn’t get dirty?”

“No!” Rickon says, squeezing the plushie even more closely.  “ _My_  Shaggy!”

Bran smiles at his brother.  “If you get tired, he can sit on my lap.  Wheelchairs are good for giving Shaggys rides.”

But Rickon shakes his head and clutches the stuffed animal tightly to his chest again as he leads Bran and Arya and Brienne out of the suite and towards the elevator.  

They reach the game room, which is already full of younger Freys, and some other riverlands children.  Immediately, Arya pushes Bran’s chair towards a table with a game of  _Dragons and Dungeons_  on it.  Rickon follows them.

“Can I play?” he asks, pulling himself onto the table.

“If you like, but it might be to hard for you.  It’s not a game for babies,” Bran says.

“I’m not a baby,” Rickon repeats.  

Brienne sits at the table with them and Arya deals her a hand as well.  “I’ll play on Rickon’s team,” she says.

Arya gives her a knowing smile and takes the cards back.  

The game is slow going.  Rickon takes a long time to play his cards, but Brienne notices that neither of the older two Starks seem to mind.  From other tables, she can here children arguing, but as Rickon takes his time to pick his cards–even with Brienne’s help–both Bran and Arya sit patiently, watching him.

“Do you have any siblings?” Bran asks Brienne.

“No.  Just me,” Brienne says sadly.  She thinks briefly of Galladon, who had been near enough Bran’s age when he’d died.   _And I was younger than Rickon._ Her heart twists.

“Were you lonely?” Arya asks her, cocking her head.

“Sometimes,” Brienne says.  

“I’m playing a four,” Rickon announces, putting the card on the table and Arya makes her play almost instantly.

The game ends and another begins, this time with a young Blackwood.

That game ends and Rickon decides he’s tired and goes and to explore another table, dragging Shaggy on the ground behind him.  Brienne excuses herself from the table to follow him.

“When’s dinner?” Rickon asks him.

“I’m sure it’s coming soon,” she says, glancing at the buffet table.  There are chafing dishes set out, but no sign of when the food might arrive.  Brienne checks her watch.  It’s already six o’clock.  Late for dinner.  “Want to go and explore and find some food?” she asks him.

Rickon nods.  

She looks over at Bran and Arya.  They are in a heated game of  _Old Gods New Gods._ Brienne tells them where she and Rickon are going, and they nod and wave her off.  She takes Rickon’s hand and the two of them leave the game room.

“Do you want a piggy back ride?” Brienne asks as they wait for the elevator.

Rickon looks up at her.  He’s so small, and she’s freakishly big–taller even than his father.  He chews his lip, thinking.  “You’ll hold Shaggy?”

“Absolutely.”  Brienne crouches down and Rickon hands her the plushie, then she helps him onto her back and stands up.  He weighs about as much as her backpack when she’s got both her physics and her chem textbooks in there.  

“You’re tall,” he tells her.

“Yes,” Brienne says.  “You’ll be tall one day, too.”

“As tall as you?”

“Possibly.”

“But I’m the baby.  I can’t be as tall as them.”

“You may well be taller.  Sometimes youngest children are the tallest in their families,” Brienne says.

“I can’t be taller than Robb.”

“Never say never,” Brienne says.  She remembers Professor Goodwin telling her that she’d make a fine scientist, even if it felt like an old boys club sometimes. She has twice the brains of any of her peers.

“But I can’t be,” Rickon repeats.

“You’re taller than him now, aren’t you?” Brienne asks him.

“But I’m on your back.”

“So? You’re still taller than him.”

She feels him wiggle behind her and tightens her hands under his little legs.  “I am,” he says.  “I’m taller than Robb.  I’m  _not_  the baby!”   He yells the last sentence, and Brienne flinches because it’s loud in her ears.

“That’s right,” she says, grinning.  “You’re not the baby.”

She finds Rickon a sandwich in the hotel lobby, and when they make it back upstairs to the game room, there’s still no food.  Arya and Bran are getting grouchy because they’re hungry, while Rickon runs about with Shaggy dragging on the floor behind him, jumping and wiggling and throwing blocks about.  

When Brienne takes him back up to the Starks’ suite for bed, he’s easy as easy can be, and when she tucks him under the blankets in the bed he’ll later share with Bran, he smiles at her and says, simply.  “I’m not the baby, so I would like a big boy story.”

“Is that right?” Brienne asks, rubbing her hand through his thick auburn hair.  “What’s a big boy story you’d like to hear.”

“One about Shaggy!” Rickon insists, and Brienne grins, and begins to make one up.


	11. let him be scared of me. (Alys)

she awakens sore, but not in pain, the tender flesh between her legs stinging when she shifts in the furs.  she knows the difference.  she’d ridden that horse until it was near enough dead, ridden hard and fast through snow and it had made her legs weak and trembling to do it, but she’d done it.  she’d refused to be caught, refused to be some meek little mouse, a pawn in her uncle’s greed. when she’d ridden, she’d awoken sore, and in pain, every muscle in her body protesting the cold, the hunger, the fact that now that she’d awoken it was time to get on her horse again.

she shifts again and it stings again and she opens her eyes and looks at him.

her husband is asleep, lying on his side like a babe, knees curled up towards his chest, hands beneath the pillows.   _it must keep you warmer, when you’re so far north,_ she thinks, looking at him.  and she’d thought karhold had grown cold as winter approached.  he is older than she.  he must have known true winter, darkness that doesn’t abate and people who starve and freeze.  

his chest is muscled, and there are some scars there that twist over his skin.  and his face, relaxed in his sleep, looks younger than it had when they’d wed.  perhaps his office ages him.  perhaps he must seem stern and hard to control his men, but perhaps he is gentle, and young.  he’d been gentle the night before.  he’d kissed her, and caressed her and moved slowly within her though from what alys had heard from her brothers and cousins and uncles, a man bedding a woman should be fast and hard, or else she doesn’t know her place.

alys makes a face at the thought.   _do i know my place, uncle?_ she thinks angrily, triumphantly as she looks at her husband.   _i am the sun of winter, i do battle with the night and rise even for just a moment.  i am always victorious in the end._

 _let him be scared of me._ but is he her husband or her uncle?  she’s not so sure. she suspects–and she may be wrong, may be a dreaming girl–that her husband may not wish to strike fear in her heart, to make her know her place.  her uncle though…she feels rage in her heart, and thinks again,  _let him be scared of me._

sigorn’s eyelids drift open and he sees her watching him.  his lips quirk up in a tentative smile and he pulls a hand out from under the pillow and reaches up to take a stray curl through his fingers.  he says something.  she doesn’t understand.  “i suppose i’ll learn,” she says aloud.

he says the word again, then releases the curl and cups her chin.  he says it again, and his hand drifts down her side, his thumb catching the side of her bared breast.  he says it again as he sits up.  he is taller than she is, and she looks up into his eyes.  they are soft.   _winter makes men hard_ , she remembers her father saying.  she wonders what her father would think of her husband, then, with eyes and touch so tentative.

alys takes a deep breath, and shifts again feeling that sting between her legs, and she kisses him.


	12. Language AU (Catelyn)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This drabble is technically in the same 'verse as this [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2261070/chapters/11196598%22>one</a>.)

catelyn damns herself for having taught robb any of the river tongue at all.  she damns herself, as she stares at his pretty little westerland bride, with her soft brown curls.  the wester and river tongues are not so different.  if you’re young and clever, you can scrape by with one when travelling in the other.

jeyne westerling looks nervous as she watches catelyn, but she stands straight.

“my lady,” she says in river tongue that must have been as garbled as catelyn’s northern when she’d first spoken to ned.  the vowels are wrong, high in her mouth and less round.  

“your grace,” catelyn replies, and curtseys.  

jeyne looks at robb, who smiles at her, encouragingly.  she says something, but the vowels…the vowels… once, catelyn would have understood it.  surely this girl’s accent is no worse than jaime lannister’s had been when first he’d come to riverrun and her father had wished that he would take an interest in lysa.  no one’s accent could be worse than jaime lannister’s had been then.  

“the king’s tongue?” catelyn asks her, not unkindly.  

“no,” jeyne says. she glances at robb again, and he sighs.

“she says that she hopes that you will come to love her as you do your own daughters, mother,” robb says, and catelyn thinks he doesn’t even know what language he is speaking anymore because he switches between northern and river tongues the way he had when he was a child.   _it must confuse him, leading some riverlanders and some northerners,_ she thinks.  he’s so young still, for all the beard that he is growing on his chin.  

catelyn turns back to jeyne and smiles and wracks her brain for whatever wester she learned when she was but a girl.  surely she’d learned something.  something more than just a question about wine, or asking which way to lannisport?  but she can’t recall.  she can’t.  

 _i grow old_ , she thinks sadly, and says as slowly and clearly as she can in the tongue she’d learned at her own mother’s knee, “i hope for very much the same, my dear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok, so i’m probably going to have to give my computer to the apple store, which puts a huge damper on my “november: drabble every day” project this year. i can try to write some on my tablet and post them here, but we'll see how that goes. i'm very peeved by this in all honesty.


	13. bold, brawny, brave (Danny Flint)

When Danny was small--perhaps five, or six--raiders from the north came to her village in the mountains. They killed her brother, her father, two cousins and her uncle. They would have killed her mother too, Danny was sure, had her mother not been in Winterfell buying winter food from the Stark king. 

Danny was raised by her grandmother and her mother. Where other homes had boys to trap and hunt, they only had Danny. Where other mothers would collect a dower chest for their daughters, they were too poor, and every spare coin they had went to buying food and wool to weave blankets for winter. Danny, young as she was, grew fast. She outgrew her dresses and started wearing the trousers and tunics that had once belonged to her older brother. Soon she outgrew those too, and had to make her own clothes from deerskin and worn wool.

All the while, men and women whispered. It was said that young Danny Flint had no dower chest, that her hands were hard and calloused from the hunt, that she had no father to keep her from being wild. But Danny Flint was happy. She knew the nooks of the mountains better than anyone, and was the protector of her family. 

Danny's grandmother died in the winter of her adolescence, and though Danny missed her, she could not help but feel guilty for she was glad that there was a little more food for her belly. Danny grew tall, taller than any other woman she knew. Her shoulders were broad and her breasts were small, and some men whispered that she wasn't a girl at all, that she was too brawny, that the gods had made her a boy as payment for having taken her father and brother from her mother. Danny let them talk. Life was hard enough without their attention.

It was when her mother died that things changed. Danny lived alone in her house in the mountains, the house she had been born in, the house her father had died protecting, that had known her mother's laughter and her grandmother's stories. She dreamed of raids, of blood and screams, and there was no one to comfort her when she woke.

Men came from the village. She had no dower chest, but no one seemed to know if the house should truly be hers or if one of the great Flints would reclaim it. A house was worth more than a chest, after all, even if it meant a mannish wife with hardened hands. But Danny rejected them all. None of them knew why. Perhaps they might have understood if they had known her nightmares. 

Danny lost the house, not to the Flint, and not to a would-be husband, but to raiders who come south again as the days grow longer. Though she drove them away, she did not notice the candle that fell, and though hers was a mostly empty house the fire spread too quickly for Danny to stop it. It was not a dream this time while she watched it burn, and when the smoke cleared, bold Danny Flint was left with nothing.

Surely she would marry, then, the others in the village whispered. But with no dower chest and no house and no breasts to speak of, what husband would want her?

They never knew an answer to that.

One day, Danny Flint vanished from the mountains. Some said she went to Winterfell, to find a place as a huntress in the Stark court. Others said she sailed the sea to Bear Isle. But it was the tallest tale that most seemed to believe: Danny Flint--bold, brawny, brave Danny Flint--had gone north to take the Black, to stand sentinel and protect the realms where the Watch had failed to protect her.


	14. The E (Arya)

"Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize.  Once again, there’s been a switch malfunction, and we are being held momentarily by the train’s dispatcher.  We’ll get you moving as soon as possible.”

“Liar,” Arya mumbles.

They’re in the tunnel on their way to Long Island City, and they haven’t moved in forty minutes.  But it’s more than that: it’s rush hour, and the car is so crowded that there isn’t room to swing a cat.  Arya’s standing with her back pressed firmly to the door, and she’s on the tips of her toes, and has been for a very long time.  She’d thought it would only be for five minutes until she got off the train at Court Square for the G.  It had clearly been a stupid decision.

The man in front of her snorts.   He’s tall, and ordinarily, Arya tries not to notice the people she’s forced to jam up against in the subway during rush hour because then it forces her to question her decision to actually live in New York and take the subway at rush hour, but this one…he could be worse.  He’s tall, and muscular, and though his expression probably mirrors her own frustration, he did laugh.

She rolls her eyes at him.  He rolls his eyes back.  

He’s got nice eyes, big and blue. His dark hair makes them seem that much brighter.  

She doesn’t usually make eye-contact on the train.  Most people don’t.  It’s not the sort of thing you _do_ in New York.  But she finds she can’t look away.  And he’s not looking away either, and there’s a slight flush creeping up his cheeks, and she’s suddenly very aware of how warm he is, pressed up against her chest the way he is and…

The train jerks ahead and the car fills with sighs of relief, and the moment should be gone, they should be looking away from each other.  But they’re not.  And when the train does at last pull into the Court Square station, Arya’s almost sad that she can at last continue her journey home.


	15. Arya & Marna

She hears her name on the wind and looks down. It's hardly high at all--not near so high as the cliff faces she'd climbed as a girl. It's easier to climb as well, with nooks and crannies between the stones.

She sees Marna standing in the godswood, her hands pressed against the small of her back, holding it while her belly stretches outward with her unborn son. Arya waves then shifts and finds a handhold and a foothold and makes her way down the wall of the burned tower with the ease of one who has climbed the wall many times.

When she reaches the wall, she unties her skirts, which she had tucked into her boots to keep them out of her way, and dusts off her bottom which is covered with stone dust from the tower and smiles at Marna.

"One day, you'll fall and break your neck," Marna says, not unkindly.

"There are worse ways to die," Arya teases, and she wraps her arm around Marna's waist and squeezes. "Should you be up?" When she'd carried Lyarra, the maester had confined her to her bed, and she'd had bigger hips than Marna's. Lyarra had also been smaller in her womb. Edwyle was already telling anyone who'd listen that Marna would give him the strongest son Winterfell would ever know. Rodrik always resisted rolling his eyes when he did that.

"Maester Hammon says that I should be abed, but I don't see what harm will come from walking about. It's not as though the babe will fall out of me, will it?" Marna asks. "Besides, I'm so...I can't be in that room any longer, waiting for him to come." She rests a hand on her stomach.

Arya squeezes her again. "I imagine it would be unbearable," she says. "The maester gave me no such command."

"He was probably picking his battles. I imagine telling you not to climb was his larger concern."

Arya glares--not so much at Marna as the memory. Maester Hammon had forbidden her from climbing while she'd been with child, and Rodrik had begged her. "If you fall," he'd said, "I'll lose you both."

"I never fall," Arya had insisted. "You know that."

"I do. But please. For me. I am being silly I know."

"Which was worse," Marna asks, "Not climbing while you were with child or birthing your daughter?"

Arya looks at Marna. The girl--she's a woman, yes, but younger and still a girl in so many ways--meets her gaze firmly, but she sees a flicker of fear in her eyes.  _She's heard too many stories of the birthing bed_ , Arya thinks, _And I'd not heard enough._ She chews her lip, considering

"They were different," she says at last. "Going without climbing was like going without my leg for nearly a year. Birthing hurt, but it was over fast enough." 

"Yes, but how much did it hurt?" Marna asks quickly, her words tumbling over themselves as she did. "Lady Melantha and Lady Lysara--" She cuts herself off, flushing. Arya sighs. Lady Melantha thinks that Marna is not good enough for Edwyle, though Edwyle loves her dearly and she loves him. And Lady Lysara feels thwarted still that her sons were denied their inheritance given that they are both older than Edwyle. Both ladies were cordial to Arya, but both thought her some clanswoman and looked down their lowland noses at her. 

"I don't know how to describe it," Arya says gently. "And I'm not sure describing it would help," she adds. "Anything I say will make it worse, not better." 

Marna does not look comforted, but she nods. "I'm growing tired. Will you help me back to bed." 

"Yes. Of course," Arya says. She glances back over her shoulder at the burned tower. 

"I'd be so frightened trying to climb that," Marna whispers. "I don't know how you do it. You're so brave." 

Arya starts. It's odd to be called brave for climbing. She's climbed since she was a girl. It's hardly terrifying. But she can't say that to Marna. Marna's already frightened. "You're brave for stealing away Lady Melantha's precious boy. I'd never have dared," she teases and Marna turns bright pink and mumbles something Arya can't hear. Arya laughs, and together, the two go into the castle.


	16. Stirred, not shaken. (Arya x Aegon)

"Martini. Shaken, not stirred." Aegon sees the woman down the bar raise an eyebrow at him as she lifts her beer to her lips. She's wearing a long silver dress, and her dark hair is tied in a neat bun which makes her long face that much more pronounced. "Can I buy you one?" he asks. 

"A weak martini? What sort of woman do you take me for," she says. "Stirred, not shaken," she adds to the bartender, and finishes her beer, setting the mug down on the bar to be disappeared. 

"It's hardly a weak martini," he smirks at her, approaching and settling on the barstool to her left. She was very pretty. Not his usual type. Her breasts were smaller, but then again, the dress made that somehow more enticing. For one thing, it was clear she wasn't wearing any sort of bra. 

"Shaking the ice breaks it up so it'll melt faster. You're ordering a weak martini and being snobby about it." The bartender brings her over her stirred martini but she doesn't drink it. "Some sort of secret agent, then? Need your wits about you while you scope the place." 

"Got me," he smirks. 

"What have you determined, then? Impress me." 

"That would be telling. I could lose my job." 

"So your a _bad_ secret agent then," she says. "Unable to tell when you're meeting your partner?" She opens her clutch purse and he catches a glimpse of an MI badge. 

"Double-O three," he says, inclining his head. 

"Double-O seven," she responds. She doesn't close the purse though. Instead she puts her hand inside it and shoots the bartender. The mute on her gun means it's quiet, just under the sound of the music in the bar. Aegon raises an eyebrow. 

"While you were staring at my tits, he was putting arsenic in my drink," she says happily. "And you're late. There's something in the store room we should check out." 

She slips the gun back into her purse and hops off the bar stool, and Aegon follows her without missing a beat, his hand floating towards his hip where his own pistol sits neatly hidden under his sports coat. 

"Oh, and Targaryen," she says glancing over her shoulder as they push into the store room. "Please do try to keep your eyes off my ass. I know it's distracting, but you're a professional."


	17. Sansa's First Lemon Cake (Catelyn)

"Come on, darling, open your mouth." Sansa was looking warily at the spoon that Catelyn was holding up for her to eat. Little did she care that Robb and Ned's bastard were happily eating their lemon cakes--albeit messily--she had never had one before in her life, and she clearly did not trust the bright yellow color of the bite of lemon cake.

"It's tasty, Sansa," Robb says as he shoves another bite into his mouth.

"Chew with your mouth closed, Robb."

He chews and swallows, then says, "Sorry mother."

Sansa's eyes flicker to her brother, who is digging his own spoon into his cake, then at Jon Snow, who is eating happily, if with less gusto than Robb. Then she looks over at the basket where they've placed Arya, who is sleeping fitfully despite the noise of the hall.

"Does baby get some?" she asks.

"Arya doesn't have teeth yet, she can only drink milk," Catelyn says gently. This has become Sansa's defense. If the baby can't have it, and Sansa doesn't want it, she won't eat it because it's unfair for the baby. "One day, Arya will eat her fill of lemon cakes." 

"Do you not want your lemon cake, Sansa?" Ned asks, and Sansa looks at him with wide blue eyes. She's unused to his being returned from the Iron Islands, and blushes shyly. 

"I am not hungry," she says.

"For dessert? I'd have thought there was always room for dessert." He reaches a hand out and tickles her stomach and Sansa giggles and wriggles in her seat. "One little bite. One little bite of lemon cake. Surely there's room for a spoonful."

Catelyn holds up the spoon again and Sansa looks at it, her tiny torso weaving back and forth.

"If Sansa doesn't want it, can I have it?" Robb asks as he takes his last bite of lemon cake.

"No, Robb," Catelyn and Ned proclaim at the same time. They smile at one another. Robb with too much sweetness in him has more energy than is fair for his poor nursemaid. Catelyn reaches over and brushes some crumbs off his chin, then turns back to Sansa. "Just a bite, love."

Sansa sighs, as if it's a great hardship to eat a lemon cake, then opens her mouth and waits for Catelyn to place the spoon on her tongue. She closes her lips about it and Catelyn pulls the spoon out and watches as Sansa's eyes cloud with curiosity and then widen, her lips spreading into a smile. 

"Yummy?" Catelyn asks.

Sansa nods fervently. "Very yummy. Thank you, mother."

Catelyn leans forward and presses a kiss to Sansa's forehead, then hands her the spoon and pushes the lemon cake towards her daughter, and before long it is gone.


	18. “Am I Ginny Weasley in this story?” (Ned x Catelyn)

Catelyn is two weeks from the scheduled c-section when Ned asks her, out of the blue, “Look, are you sure about the name Rickon?”

“Yes,” she says, doing her best to keep the dryness out of her voice.  “Yes, I’m sure.”

“It’s just…I don’t know.  It feels a lot like the end of Harry Potter, where all of the kids are named after people from my side of the family, but none of them are named after Ginny’s.”

“Am I Ginny Weasley in this story?”

“You get what I mean,” Ned says, rolling his eyes.

“Robb’s not named for anyone in your family,” Cat says, shifting and resting her hands on the bump that is Rickon.

“Yes, but Sansa?  Arya?  Bran?  They’re all Stark names.  All of them.  If we name the kid Rickon, someone’s going to ask if I didn’t let you choose the names.  What about…” he pauses, then frowns.  “I don’t actually know any Tully names…”

“You know Hoster, and Edmure, and–”

“Yeah, but we can’t name him after them.”

“We could do Edmyn.  That’s a Tully name.”

“Too similar.  It’d get confusing at family events.  I would have thought we’d have learned our lesson with your uncle Brynden and Bran at the last family reunion.  Are there really no more?”

“Well, there’s Kermit.”

Ned sputters.  “What?”

“Kermit.  And Elmo.  And Grover.”

“You’re just pulling my leg.”

“I promise I’m not.  I think he was a great-grandfather?  Or great-great-grandfather?  I can’t remember.”

“Your family is named after muppets?” Ned asks, and Catelyn feels a grin spread across her face.

“No, Ned.  Muppets were named after my family.”


	19. "Especially then, Your Grace" (Alysanne)

Alysanne circles the library, running her fingers along the spines of books as she passes them.  Periodically, she plucks one from the shelf, like an apple and lets it fall open in her hands, reads a line or two, then puts it back.  

Barth– _Septon_  Barth.  Jaehaerys may call him by his given name, but Alysanne does not know the man yet–is watching her.  It surprises her little.

“May I be of service, your grace?” Barth asks, and Alysanne glances at him.  He meets her gaze evenly.   _He is of the Faith.  But what sort of Faith?_ Jaehaerys has spent many long nights with their cousin Robar.  The Faith would not be so foolish as to put a septon in their library unless he did not mind serving the crown.  Alysanne bites back a snort.   _An abomination, am I?_ She rests her hand swell of her stomach which is beginning to push forward through the front of her dress.  

“I would read, septon, but I know not what.”

Septon Barth inclines his head, but it is not a gesture of deference.  Nor is it mocking.  It is something else entirely. “Does your grace like poetry?” he asks, taking a step away from her and towards one bookshelf.  It is full of scrolls in neat leather cases.  

“Well enough, though if it were poetry I wanted, I’d summon a singer.  Poetry is better heard, not read.”  He inclines his head again, smiling.

“Would Your Grace prefer a history, then?” he asks.  He nods to the shelf she’s standing next to.  “There are some fine ones there.   _The High Histories of the Mountains as transcribed by Maester Gorman_ is interesting, if you ignore the Maester’s distaste for House Arryn.”

Alysanne cocks her head.  “And why would Maester Gorman have distaste for House Arryn?  I would have thought that as a maester of the citadel, he would keep such an opinion to himself.”

“You’ll have to read it and tell me what you think,” the septon says, walking towards her and pulling the book from the shelf.  “I’d heard that Your Grace councils the king.  You are surely wise enough to find answer to that on your own.”

“You are being insolent.”

“A thousand apologies, Your Grace.”  But he doesn’t seem apologetic at all.  If anything, he’s smiling, and Alysanne stands taller as she takes the book from him.  She opens it and scans the first few lines.  Then she frowns.

“Surely a maester of the citadel did not write such a thing?  It’s…”

But the septon is inclining his head again, and smiling and Alysanne stares at him.  “It’s hardly a history.  It’s an overt diatribe.”

“History often is,” he shrugs.  “And only fools think it is not so.”

“The Citadel must be full of fools if this is what they think,” Alysanne stares, reading the words over again.  She mouths the words  _so high in their castle that often they do not see the goings on beneath the clouds.  “_ What must the citadel think of those of us on dragonback, I wonder,” she muses.

“What indeed,” Septon Barth agrees.  He begins to stroll away, and Alysanne calls after him.

“Why did you give this to me?” she demands.  

He pauses.  “I surmise it will be an interesting read for you, Your Grace.  And, of course, ” and the smile fades, “You have your husband’s ear.  Anyone who has the king’s ear should think carefully about how they know what they know.”

“Even if it’s brought to my attention by a septon whose faith calls my son an abomination?” Alysanne’s voice rings like a bell in the room, and she stares at the septon in his plain brown habit.

“Especially then, Your Grace,” Barth says, and he walks away.


	20. She Likes Lemon Cakes. (Myrcella)

Sansa has been crying.  She pretends she hasn’t been, but Myrcella can see it.  The skin around her eyes is pink and puffy the way that Tommen’s gets whenever Joff is being Joff.  It makes the blue of them that much sharper.

Uncle Tyrion says she is the cleverest princess to ever have lived.  Her septa says that she is gracious and kind.  Her mother says that she is a lionness, and brave.  But she feels like none of those things when she looks at Sansa.

Sansa’s father is a traitor, and Joff had his head.  Sansa’s brother is in open rebellion, and her mother as well.  Her little sister is dead, and her brothers are far to the north.  She is alone, though she is surrounded by the king’s household, and she cries when she thinks no one is looking.  Myrcella should comfort her.  It is what clever, kind, lionesses do, especially for their brother’s betrothed.  But Myrcella doesn’t know what to say, and so she doesn’t say anything at all.

They sit and sew, and Sansa is silent.  Sometimes she slips to the godswood to pray to her father’s gods.  Over dinner, Sansa chews her food very daintily and listens to whatever it is that Joff is saying, or mother.  When asked to pass the wine, or a tray of fruit, she does so.  But Myrcella rarely hears her speak unless someone directs a question at her.

* * *

She likes lemon cakes.  Myrcella sees that.  Where often her desserts go unfinished, every crumb of lemon cake is gone from Sansa’s plate whenever they are served after dinner.  So Myrcella begins to stitch a lemon patterened handkerchief for her.  It’s a silly gift, she thinks, but it’s something, and if she can’t make Sansa stop crying, perhaps she’ll make her smile.

She doesn’t finish it, though.  At least, not before Uncle Tyrion sends her down to Dorne to meet her betrothed.  She takes it with her and tucks it into one of her cases and determines to finish it when she is in Dorne.  She’ll give it to Sansa when she weds Joff.  Or send it to her sooner, if the war ends and such a triviality seems worthy of the time.

Before she steps onto the boat that will take her out to see, she kisses Tommen’s cheek, and curtseys to Joffrey.  And, for the briefest moment, she takes Sansa’s hand, and squeezes it.


	21. “Papa, look!  It’s snowing!” (Rickon)

“Papa, look!  It’s snowing!”

“It is indeed.”

“Does that mean winter is coming at last?”

“Not just yet.  It’s still summer.”

“It’s been summer for _ever_ ,” whines Osha.

“When I was a boy, summer lasted a full seven years,” Rickon says, running his hands through his daughter’s hair.  She is still quite small, and has her mother’s coloring of thick brown curls and a heart-shaped face.  But she has Rickon’s blue eyes.   _My mother’s eyes_.  Sometimes, when he closes his own, he can see her, the way she was before Bran fell.  Before she’d gone.

Osha’s hair is soft, and her curls are springy.    _I swear that I’ll be around for you._ “Can we go outside and play, papa?”

“Finish your breakfast,” he says.  He glances at the door.  Serena has not yet risen, though even if she has, he may not know.  The maester told him that she may be having twins, and that she should remain in bed as long as she can.  So Rickon tends to their daughter at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the way his mother once tended to him.  His father never had, but his father had been lord of Winterfell, and Robb had been older and in need of the lord’s attention, far more than baby Rickon needed his father.

Osha eats eagerly, and when she’s done, Rickon wipes her face with a napkin that he hands to the hovering nursemaid.  He finds a cloak lined with fur for her and fastens it under her chin, then takes her tiny hand in his great calloused one and leads her out into the lichyard.

The castle is still being built.  In retrospect, perhaps there had been no need to tear it stone from stone when Arya and her pack had thrown House Bolton into the sea.  Everyone still seemed to call it the Dreadfort, though only the great weirwood tree remained of the Bolton’s castle.   _They should call you the Dreadstarks,_ Arya had japed, running her hand through Rickon’s hair as once Jon Snow had run his through hers,  _It will happen eventually if they call you the Dreadfort Starks, we may as well preempt the shift._ Rickon had forced a smile at his sister’s words.  

“Papa, come  _on!”_ Osha whines, tugging at his hand.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he says smiling down at her and lengthening his stride so that she can toddle along as quickly as she’d like through the lichyard.  Some of the workmen bow to him and Rickon nods to them, smiling.  

Osha leads him to the kennels, and Rickon feels a smile creep along his face.  “She’s still not ready for you,” he says.

“I know, but I want to make sure her bed is ready,” Osha insists.  Rickon shares a glance with the kennel master.  They go to the back of the kennel near where Shaggydog is lying, old and sleeping.  He’ll fade soon, Rickon is sure.  His fur is more grey than black, and his eyes are full of cataracts, and he whines when he stands because his hips are stiff.  Rickon runs his hand over the wolf’s head.  “Your great niece and nephew coming soon,” he whispers to Shaggy.  “Stay long enough for them, will you?”  Nymeria had only had one litter, and in that litter there’d been only one female.  And that female had whelped twice now, and in this second litter was a new wolf for him, and one for Osha as well.  

Osha is in the pen that will house the wolf pups when they arrive from Winterfell, rearranging blankets and moving straw about with her foot.  “What will you name her?” Rickon asks.  He asks every day, and every day meets with the same “I’m  _thinking_ ,” that makes him smile.

Bran had teased that he’d better pick a better name than Shaggydog this time, but looking back at his old wolf, Rickon can’t think of anything better than Shaggy.  The only thing that’s come close has been Stonetooth, for the man who housed him and Osha while they were on Skagos.   _I suppose I’ll decide when I meet the pup._ Perhaps he’ll name his pup Shaggydog II, just to amuse Bran.  

But Osha still hasn’t answered.  She’s chewing her lip.  “Thinking?” he asks her.

“What if I can’t think of a name?” she asks him, very seriously.  Rickon crouches down so their eyes are the same height.  

“You will,” he says gently.  “I did when I was your age.”

Osha peers around his shoulder at Shaggy.  Shaggy licks his nose while he watches them with clouded eyes.  

“Will she look like Shaggy?”

“To some extent.”

“When will she get here?”

“Soon.”

“Good.  Come on papa, let’s play in the snow!”


	22. Mya only has the mountain. (Mya)

“She’s the king’s bastard, you know?”

He’d thrown her into the air and caught her.  He’d laughed with her, and rubbed her belly and tickled her and kissed her, his whiskers scratching at her cheek.  And she’d felt so safe.  A baby should always feel safe. 

“Truly?  King…Robert?”

He’s dead now, though.  Killed by a boar.  She wonders if he thought of her at all when he died, or if he was happy to forget her in the mountains.  She does her best to forget him.  He hadn’t wanted her in the end.  She wishes she didn’t want him.

“Aye, she looks like him.  Has his coloring.  And his build.  She’s tall and strong, isn’t she.  I thought she was a man when first I saw her.”

She remembers his eyes best–blue like the sky overhead.  How they’d shined with joy at the sight of her.  How she’d run to him screaming for papa whenever he visited her mother.  He’d been proud that she had his look, and had japed that she would grow up to be brave and strong just like him.  They say that Joffrey has the Lannister look.  Was he brave and strong like her father, at least?

“She’d be pretty if she dressed like a woman.”

Mychel hadn’t cared that she’d eschewed skirts for trousers.  He hadn’t cared that her hair had been short, or that she’d been broad of shoulder.  He’d kissed her, and loved her, and called her beautiful, and when he’d gone he’d said he’d speak to his father for surely a king’s daughter had blood good enough for House Redfort.

“Pretty and with the blood of a king–she could do more than just take mules up and down a mountain, I’d warrant.”

He had not spoken to her since. She’d heard it from Masha that he was to wed Ysilla Royce.  

“Get herself to Gulltown and find a rich husband, she could.”

Mya has no skirts, no hair, no father, no husband.  Mya only has the mountain.


	23. “what woman wouldn’t want to be free?” (Arya)

“this one’s wearing bolton’s flag,” the man with the set of twin pistols says, gesturing lazily at arya.  “she must have been on the flayed man.”

“what sort of idiot walks about wearing her captain’s flag on her breast?” arya snaps angrily.  “maybe i made a shirt out of whatever i could find?” she narrows her eyes so they can’t see the lie.  men don’t notice lies through narrowed eyes, she’s observed.  the man with the pistols looks taken aback.

“what ship were you on, then?” he asks her.

“we were taken captive off the black brother when the mountain’s men found us,” arya says.  “he was the ship’s cook,” she jerks her hand at hot pie, “and he was muscle.” she points to gendry.  both are doing their best not to look as though this is entirely new to them.

“muscle, eh?” the man with the red beard says, observing gendry.  “aye, he’d have that look about him.  you good with an axe?”

“better with a hammer,” gendry grunts, and arya resists the urge to sigh.

“well lads,” the man with the red beard asks the men.  “what do you say? prisoners?”

“we’re  _not_  your prisoners,” arya snaps, and she hears hot pie stifle a moan next to her.  “you’d be better served with letting us join your crew.”

“and why would a bonny lass like you want to join a pirate’s crew?” the redbeard asks.

arya chews her lip.   _because it’s better than nothing_ , she wants to say but that’s too true.  instead, she says “what woman wouldn’t want to be free?”

the man with the twin pistols and the man with the yellow shirt share a glance, then look at her.

“she’s hardly more than a girl, thoros,” says one.

“i can see that,” says the redbeard, hardly, but not unkindly.  arya looks at him with hard eyes, her hands on her hips.  he sighs.  “we’ll put it to a vote when we get on deck.  bind their wrists and ankles and throw them in the dinghy.”


	24. she is art.  (Jaqen)

the cells are black, and a man named jaqen h’ghar waits for his sentencing.  he is not afraid of death–oh no.  a man named jaqen h’ghar was always going to die.  he had scarcely lived, in truth, and his life was short and with purpose.  what he hadn’t expected was to be caught.  

a man named jaqen h’ghar waits in the black cells beneath the red keep for a crime another man committed.  that other man…well, jaqen does not know his name, though once he might have worn his face.  that other man is dead, and soon jaqen will be as well.  that jaqen has lived this long is a mystery no one knows.

no one would know the keep.  as far as no one knows, no one has ever found himself trapped in the black cells, and him of many faces would like such information at hand.  perhaps when no one is truly nothing, another man will need to get in–or out.  so no one sits, and waits, and knows that–soon enough–he will continue on his journey and that jaqen h’ghar will be no more.

the man known as jaqen h’ghar has few memories.  some from across the sea, lorath and its stone mazes–truly the memories of the man jaqen h’ghar.  he remembers king’s landing, glowing like gold in the sun of midday, and he remembers a woman with hair of gold riding through the city, green eyes flashing, a smile that does not reach her eyes on her lips.  she is beautiful, the man known as jaqen thinks.  beautiful and proud and haughty as the lion sigil that patterns her dress. 

the man known as jaqen h’ghar has not seen such hair before–like spun gold.  across the sea, hair is lighter, or darker, but never so rich.  no one has seen eyes like that though–hungry eyes, determined eyes, the eyes of someone with power and who will wield it as she will.  she is graceful.  she is art.  and, a man does not doubt, that she is death.


	25. I do not wish to spend my life in this tower. (Elaena)

“What are you doing, Elaena?” she hears Daena call from the other room, but Elaena ignores her.

She has just turned twelve, and has spent near six months on the Maidenvault with her sisters, and no other company save kin.  Her brother calls it their Court of Beauty, and calls her hair her crown.

 _I do not want a crown of beauty,_ Elaena thinks, her hand trembling as she holds the knife.  She’s never been allowed a knife before.  Only a dinner knife, whose edge is not nearly as sharp as this.  She’d snuck it off Aegon when he’d come to visit them three days before, and she’s staring at it now, taking deep breaths.  It is sharp, and made of Valyrian steel, and has a hilt of dragonbone.

“Elaena?” she hears Daena get up from her seat in the solar where she’s been reading.  It’s a calm day for Daena.  Aegon visited again today (looking for his knife, he said, though Elaena noticed that he’d spent little time in search of it) and whenever Aegon visits, Daena is a little calmer.  The door creaks behind her and Elaena hides the knife beneath her table as she sees her sister in the glass.

She’s not quick enough.

“What’ve you got there?” Daena asks, crossing the room and sitting down in a chair next to her.  Her hands find Elaena’s.  Her calluses are fading, and her hands are soft again.  She’d complained of it endlessly.  “Is that Aegon’s dagger?”  She holds it up then looks at Elaena, her eyebrows raised, her eyes worried.  “What were you doing with that, little sister?”

“I...” Elaena says, flushing.  She doesn’t want Daena to be angry with her, Daena, who’d said endlessly that she wished that she had a streak in her hair like Elaena.

Daena frowns and puts the knife on the table and pulls out Elaena’s hands.  She examines her wrists carefully, then looks at her sister curiously.  “Elaena,” she prompts gently.  Very gently.  Much more gently than ever Daena was.  Rhaena was the gentle one.  And Baelor said that Elaena should take after Rhaena and be as pious as she, not take to Daena whom she loved so dearly.

“I was going to cut my hair,” Elaena said through a tight throat.  “Cut it all off.  Perhaps if...If I don’t have this crown of beauty, Baelor...he’ll...he’ll see I’ll not tempt...”

Anger flashed through Daena’s eyes.  “I hate him,” she hissed.  “Elaena,” she whispered, and kissed her sister’s cheek.  “He is wrong to have us here.   _Wrong_.  His fear of temptation is madness.”

“I know,” Elaena says quickly.  She does know that.  She does.  “I was only going to try.  Try to get out.  I know it’s not my fault.  I know he’s mad.”  Even if once he’d read to her before bed, her elder brother with a sweet voice and a generous heart.  She felt hot and cold all over again.  “I do not wish to spend my life in this tower.  So I thought I’d try.”  It sounds so pitiful when she said it aloud.  It had felt so much more clever in her head.  She is the clever one.  Why had her brother reduced her to something pitiful and stupid?

Daena takes a deep breath and looks at her sister’s reflection.  There’s a wistful expression on her face.  “I’d cut my hair too if I thought it’d get me out, but I have the body of a woman,” she said darkly.  She looks back at Elaena.  “I suppose you wear it in a braid mostly anyway.  Let me do it so you don’t hurt yourself.”

Daena takes up Aegon’s knife and holds Elaena’s braid.  Elaena grips the table, and a moment later she hears the slicing of the knife, and her head is suddenly lighter.


	26. she had not known that he played.  (Elaena x Michael)

elaena was reading through accounts when she heard it through the open window, a quiet tinkling of strings being plucked.  daeron must have found himself a new singer to entertain him in the gardens, now that winter was ending and the spring flowers were blooming.  daeron’s lovely wife loved singers, and he hired every single one he could find to please her.  

she smiled, though it was more an exercise of the lips than of the heart.  to be young and in love…well, elaena did not like thinking on that.  being young had meant baelor’s tower and being in love meant losing alyn to the seas.  she did not mind ronnel’s steadiness, and found joy in her work and her children, but she would call neither the stuff she’d thought one day to have before she’d been locked away.   _better than that, though.  anything is better than that_.  

the music kept tinkling in her ears and after a time she put her quill down and went to the window, looking down into the gardens.  to her surprise, she did not see daeron.  she did not even see queen mariah, who had spent every moment outside now that the days were growing longer, her face turned towards the sun, her eyes closed and a smile on her lips.  she did, however, see ser michael manwoody, his fingers dancing over the silver strings of a harp.

she had not known that he played.  

she’d have thought she might have heard something of it, for she made it her business to know everything about everyone of import.  he had studied at the citadel for a time as a boy, and daeron had made noises about putting him on the small council one day when a seat opened up.  he had dancing eyes, and a pointed beard on his chin and was young enough to marry jeyne and be a good husband for her, though he’d seemed to have no desire to wed.   _young enough to be my son_ , she thinks as she watches his fingers pluck at harp strings, his laughing eyes intent in a way that elaena had not expected and which made her feel…

being young had been dark for elaena–closed doors and dark minds and lover and husband dying too soon.

but when michael played, elaena could pretend.


	27. My Lord Died Seven Times (Edric)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was actually supposed to be the first section in a oneshot about Edric during all of Beric's deaths, but I don't think I'm going to finish it so here you go.

“What you must remember, Ned, is that not all knights are good.  Not even all lords are good.”

“Yes my lord,” Ned says.  “I’ll remember.”

Lord Beric smiles down at him, and reaches over to pat his head.  

He’s twelve now.  Nearly thirteen.  And he’s been with Lord Beric nearly half his life.  and he will be with Lord Beric until he is a man grown, and once he’s knighted, he and Lord Beric will ride to Starfall and Lord Beric will marry his aunt Allyria, and they shall trade places—Allyria to Blackhaven to tend Lord Beric, and Ned to take his lordly seat at last.

“What you must also remember,” Lord Beric continues, “is that just because a lord is your lord means that you cannot think for yourself.  For all this talk of kings and lords and knights, you are still a man, or will be.  And a man does what he thinks is best.”

“You’re doing as Lord Stark commanded,” Ned points out. “You’re keeping Robert’s peace.

“I am,” says Lord Beric.  He smiles at Ned.  “And I will see that peace.  Look about you as we ride.  What do you see?”

Ned has seen a lot.  He has seen the burned holdfasts, the frightened faces of the smallfolk, looking at Lord Beric’s unfamiliar banner and wondering if he’d put their homes to the torch.  

“Fear,” Ned says.

Lord Beric nods.  “I do not know who gave Ser Gregor his spurs.  I do not know who taught him what it means to be a protector of men.  but this…” Lord Beric gestures, and shakes his head and does not continue.

Ned can guess though.

* * *

He is shaking like a little boy, not a squire, not one who is nearly a man grown.  He hates himself for hiding, though Lord Beric had commanded him to hide should battle ever befall them.  “You are not a man yet, Ned.”

“But I can fight, my lord.”

“Perhaps, but you are still a boy, Ned.  And I would not have you harmed.”

Lord Beric is the closest thing that Ned has had to a father for a long while now, and he is dead now.  He is lying in the dirt, blood streaming from his armor, turning the dirt to some perverse mud.  

Ser Gregor had ridden off, his lance still dripping Lord Beric’s blood.  Ned had almost been surprised—that Ser Gregor had not simply slaughtered them all.  Perhaps he had noticed how quickly Lord Beric’s men had scattered and had thought they wouldn’t trouble him more.  Or simply he hadn’t cared.

Ned stands and crosses to Lord Beric’s corpse.  He feels sweat on his face from his helm, or perhaps that is tears.  

He feels a hand on his shoulder and twists around wildly, reaching for his sword at his waist, but knowing that he’ll not get it fast enough, and that even if he could, the man behind him has the jump on him.  It’s fitting—if he’s to die, let it be with Beric.

But it’s only Thoros.  “There’s nothing you can do for him,” Thoros says gently.  He kneels down in the bloody mud next to Beric as well and removes his lobstered gauntlet.  He closes Lord Beric’s eyes and begins to murmur in High Valyrian, some prayer to his red god.

“No,” Ned says numbly.  “He held to the Seven.  We should…” but he can’t remember.  He’d been so little when his own father had died, and the Words to the Stranger are only said over death.  He’d not truly seen death, not till now.  What should he say?

 _Stranger, guide this soul_ … he thinks, but he can’t remember the rest of it.  He finds himself listening to Thoros’ Valyrian.

It is a strange tongue.  It sounds oddly liquid to Ned’s ears.  Beautiful, he supposed, if different.  But it was eerie too.  Unfamiliar, and it made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

Thoros finishes his prayer and bends to kiss Lord Beric on the lips and Ned must be dreaming, because he thinks he sees Lord Beric stir.


	28. if the direwolves had a psychic link...

“dang it’s cold up here.”

“shut up summer, we get it.”

“no, nymeria, i don’t think you get it.  it’s like really cold.”

“it’s snowing down here too.”

“snow.  that’s nice.  you call  _that_  a snow storm?  i couldn’t feel my paws this morning?  and at least you’ve got company.  i miss having a pack.”

“you’ve got–”

“yeah i know, i’ve got humans.  i miss–”

“your human didn’t throw rocks at you, ok?  so shut up and enjoy yourself and your  _real_  winter or whatever the fuck you want to say, ok?”

“when did you get all alpha?”

“when i was the bitch queen of the riverlands.  are you the bitch queen of the north?”

“i’m the prince of the green.”

“fight me.”

“you’re just angry.  you’re as bad as shaggy.”

“i am  _not_  as bad as shaggy.”

“why is nymeria as bad as me?  i’m not bad.  also unicorns are delicious.”

“shaggy we’re having a private conversation here.”

“having it very loudly.”

“haha very funny ghost.”

“will you two shut up we’re–”

“sniping.  look i know you both have been very frustrated since lady and grey wind, but is there any need to make this worse?”

“to be fair, nymeria’s been bad since–”

“ _don’t–”_

“arya decided she didn’t want her anymore.”

“arya does  _too_ want me.  i know she does.”

“yeah? then why hasn’t she found you?”

“shut up.”

“and does she randomly come into your head sometimes?”

“yeah.  she does.”

“liar.”

“who are you calling a liar?  eating unicorns shaggy?”

“that’s what they call them up here.”

“ _those are giant goats, ok?  and i should know.  i eat lots of goats.”_

“that doesn’t make  _me_  a liar.  that makes society a liar.”

“and you subscribe to it like a sheep.  i declare shaggy super not the alpha when we all get back together.”

“seconded.”

“thirded.”

“hey!”

“i’m just saying, look at my resume.  i have the most pack leadership experience, ok?  biggest pack  _ever_  in the riverlands.”

“still don’t know shit about winter, though.”

“ghost, whose side are you on?”

“well, since i’m very clearly not going to be the alpha, i figured i’d at least keep everyone honest.  especially since as long as jon’s hanging out in the back of my head, he’s kind of invaded my conscience.  he says hi by the way.”

“tell him bran says hi.”

“i will, thank you summer.”

“does arya say hi, nymeria?”

“sure she does.”

“i still don’t think that she’s ever been in your head.”

“oh yeah?  how come…how come sometimes i think i’m across the sea?  and there are lots of cats and dead fish?”

“arya is  _not_  across the sea.”

“oh yeah?  wanna stake your bid for alpha on that, summer?”

“you know what?  fine.  i’ll stake my bid for alpha on that, nymeria.”

“haha sucker.  just you wait.”


	29. She knows (Daenys)

there are some things that daenys just knows.  the color of the sky tomorrow, the harmonies of dragonsong, the hissing sound of lava against the sea.  there are some things daenys just knows.

some people have called her mad, though those are the ones who do not know.  they do not like to listen, they do not like to be wrong.  the ones who do know her know that daenys knows the difference between her dreams and the world she sees when she looks down from dragonback.  she can count her fingers and toes, and she knows what the ghiscari generals will say before they even arrive.  but no one listens to daenys save her family.  she warns but they do not hear.

so when she wakes screaming, she runs to her father.   _doom_ , she tells him through her tears.   _doom, father.  flee._ and when her father tells his friends, they laugh at him. (daenys knows that they will laugh at him and tells him so but he tells them anyway for they are his friends, even though daenys knows, she knows, oh oh oh she knows.)  but her father knows that daenys knows and her father packs the household away.  her father takes them all on dragonback and west they go, west they go, and daenys dreams of fire and blood and ice cold eyes.


	30. master of ships (Stannis)

“master of…ships?” stannis does not bother keeping derision out of his voice and he looks between robert and jon arryn.  jon arryn does not seem overly pleased himself.

robert claps him on the shoulder.  stannis hates the way robert always claps him on the shoulder when he’s trying to prove his own correctness.  “what better man?  my own brother, whose holdfast is right in the middle of blackwater bay.”

“because you gave storm’s end to renly,” stannis mutters under his breath.

robert hears him.  he can see it in the way that his eyes roll slightly  _not this argument again,_ they seem to say,  _will you never let it go?_ they seem to say.  “look, you’ll be a good master of ships.  build up the royal fleet so we won’t need to rely on those damned redwynes if ever we need to sail.”

“i’m sure your goodfather would provide ships from his ports,” stannis says stonily.

“aye, but i want my own fleet.  king robert’s hammer.  lady lyanna,” his eyes go misty for a moment, the way they always do.  stannis waits for it to pass.  “and you’ll be at the head of it.  just think, stannis, the head of the greatest fleet westeros will have ever seen.”

“i think i’d be better suited for master of laws,” stannis says, turning to jon arryn, hoping that the king’s hand will see reason.  “i’m hardly a sailor, but i am well versed in the law.”  jon arryn heaves a sigh and looks at robert.

“we need someone older than you,” robert sighs.  “someone the realm will feel safe with, at least for a time.  i was thinking…our uncle of estermont, or perhaps lord tarth.  and then in a few years we’ll switch it over.   you’re too young now.”

“a few years?” stannis says.  he can abide anything for a few years, he supposes.  if robert truly means it, and doesn’t give the position to renly as he gave him storm’s end.  robert nods.  “all right then,” he sighs.

“there! that’s settled,” robert booms happily, clapping stannis on the shoulder again.  “a good day’s work well done,” and he strolls away with a spring in his step.

stannis watches him go, then glances at jon arryn.  “it’s for the best,” jon says, though he sounds as though he doesn’t necessarily believe it.  stannis grits his teeth.  


End file.
